January 27

Mboté a beno !!!

We've had an awesome week.  After we got transfer information we all
went out to dinner at this restaurant that actually makes really good
burgers that come with a fried egg! So...that was awesome.

On Tuesday I bought some $1 ties that are beautiful.  We spent the day
going about our normal rendez-vous, but for some of them it was the
last time they'd see Elder Brockbank, so he had to say good bye.  It
was really sad.  Our last rendez-vous was with a member who wanted us
to meet her friend, so we had a great time getting to know her and her
neighbors who were also invited.  At one of our appointments during
the day, there was a half naked boy running around wearing a TUMBLEBUS
GYMNASTICS SHIRT!!!! It was the coolest thing, so I grabbed him just
long enough to snag a picture for proof.  It was so funny.  This
family also gives us a ginger drink every time we're over there called
tangawis.  It's disgusting and I almost throw up every time but I just
don't have the heart to tell them I hate it.  We also get boiled corn
and roasted peanuts sometimes.  They're so nice.

Wendesday was just as awesome.  We went to go meet with an inactive
member, but while we were waiting for him this lady walks by mumbling
something about Jehovah's Witnesses, so we just told her in Munikituba
that we weren't and then she suddenly got really interested.  Well
while we're telling her who we are, the member shows up and invites
the lady to sit down with us, and then he proceeds to teach her the
whole first lesson by himself.  So that worked out a lot better than
we could have hoped!  And it happens every day.  The miracles do not
cease here.  My fear is that I will become desensitized, so I decided
to start a daily miracle journal! I plan on keeping it the rest of my
life, inspired by something Elder Eyring said a couple conferences
ago.  I also saw an Iowa Hawkeyes shirt, so that was cool!  And then I
watched a wheel fall off a taxi and scrape to a stop.  Welcome to
Africa!

I spent an hour or so that night calling all my converts from
Cameroun.  It's the best thing in the world.  I can't get over hearing
"Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!" when you tell them who it is.  I'll be super sad to
go home because it's unlikely that I'll ever see them again :/  You
never know though!  A guy can pray, right?

Elder Brockbank and I had our last day as companions on Thursday, and
we started off by sitting down with someone for the first time and
setting a baptismal date because he was so incredible.  He works for
the Chinese as a fisherman and only sleeps 3 hours every night.  He
can't read but is so excited to have the Book of Mormon.  He's been at
church for the last month straight and Lord knows how he pays to get
there, based on his living conditions.  Anyway, we're really excited
to work with him in the future.

Brockbank had to say goodbye to some more people, and made several of
them cry, which is normal because he was an awesome missionary and
really loved these people.  His mom must not cry much though, because
he kept it together like a boss where I was fighting myself to contain
that salt water that sometimes escapes my eyes.  We helped someone
draw water from an 18 meter deep well, which is just wide enough for
someone to stand straight up and go all the way down to clean out by
hand.  The ladies watching me pull out water were saying, "ohh he's
not as strong as the other one" haha, which is so true.  God blessed
the Africans with brutal honesty.

For our last meal, Elder VanAusdal made a delicious pizza, and then we
even had power all night.

Elder Brockbank left at about 8:30 the next morning, which was super
sad, and Elder Hatch and I started working almost immediately.  We
trekked across the city in pouring rain without an umbrella because I
left mine at the church, and then I totally missed the guys' house
that we were heading for and we had to cross a river of black sludge
up to our shins, only to find out that we had passed the house we were
supposed to go to and had to trudge back through it amidst cries of
"ohh mundele mundele mundele!!!!"  It was great.  The best part was
that we called the guy to tell him we were there, and he said he was
coming, but 30 minutes later we had to call it because we had to start
walking to our next rendez-vous.  The next couple appointments were
great, although the rain on the tin roofs made it hard for us to
understand, and it was funny yelling the Plan of Salvation at someone.
 But it was great.

Our next rendez-vous said he was coming when we got to his house, but
we were standing so long that these ladies came and brought us chairs
to sit in.  Then we were sitting there waiting for so long that they
eventually came and asked us what we were even doing there, so we
started introducing ourselves and before we knew what was happening we
had already taught the whole Restoration and gave out a Book of
Mormon.  I love Africa.  The best part was that we said a prayer, got
up to leave, and a minute down the road ran into the guy we were
supposed to meet.  Unfortunately we didn't get to sit down with him,
but we'll get him next week.

Saturday was rough.  I called a kid we met last week on Friday night
to meet him the next morning, but when we got to his place I called
him and he was like, "oh yeah I'm in school and don't get out for
another 4 hours!" So it was a face palm moment, but we had to head to
our next appointment anyway, a good 45 minute walk away.  It was worth
it because we went back over the restoration and set another baptismal
date, which she accepted, and then came to church with her little
sister and loved it!

We also met a Kenyan who'd worked with a really old missionary, so
we're gonna try to pick him back up.

On our way to a baptism we ran into another taxi stuck in the mud, so
we helped him get unstuck as he shot a nice streak of black mud up my
right pant leg and up my shirt.  It was sweet.  We got a lot of thumbs
up from the crowd that gathered to watch the mundele get dirty.  Then
a crazy lady stopped us and asked us to cast a demon out of her but we
had to tell her we would pray for her at home because we don't exactly
do delivrances.  She was very nice (and I don't think she has a
demon).  The baptism was great.  It was actually an investigator of
Elder Hatch's last area, and he got to baptize him.  It was awesome.
We taught English and had basketball class and came home and Elder
VanAusdal made biscuits and gravy that tasted like heaven mixed with
flour and water.

Sunday was incredible.  Beautiful weather and we had 12 investigators
for just our side, and 14 for the other elders.  Sacrament was packed!
 We sang 12 verses of "There's a Green Hill Far Away". Afterwards we
were exchanging numbers left and right and meeting tons of people  and
I loved it.

TESTIMONY TIME!

I absolutely love this work.  I would never trade this experience for
anything in the world.  Not even an entire All American Cake from
Costco.  Sometimes I wonder why I came here of all places.  Maybe it's
because God knows that there's no possible way I could go home and
ever doubt my faith.  After everything I've witnessed...it makes me
want to take an atheist by the hand and walk them through the last
year of my life.  GOD IS REAL.  He lives! He loves ALL of you!!!
These people are the poorest of poor and even THEY know that that is
true!  How could you possibly look someone in the eye who has been
through every tragedy known to man and still believes that God is his
Heavenly Father and tell him he's wrong?!  Maybe it's just me.  Maybe
I'm a sucker for a good story.  But when there are THOUSANDS of
stories that are uncannily similar...you can't help but believe.  I
mean come on.  A girl just recently told the elders that back before
the Church was even in the Congo a huge war broke out in her city.
The leader of her "neighborhood" would distribute goods to the people
as they lined up for fresh water and rice.  This really old, frail
woman who could barely stand asked this girl for help, but she brushed
on by.  Almost immediately, she felt a whisper "go back and help," so
she takes this ancient woman to her home and gives her some medicine.
The medicine does nothing, and now the girl feels really bad because
this woman is definitely going to die right in her own home and
everyone is going to think she killed her or something, so she gets on
her knees and pleads to God to know why she had to help this woman.
Well, she goes back into the front room and finds the old woman
standing up perfectly straight and in good health.  She says, "jump!"
and the woman jumps.  "Run!" and the woman runs around in a circle.
She says, "how did this happen?!" And the woman says that while she
was praying, two angels came and "fixed" her, and that the two angels
told her that it was done by the power found in the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Well now the girl who prayed is freaking
out because she didn't know if she was supposed to create a church or
where she was supposed to find it, until one day she's in France and
stumbles upon the church in the Yellow Pages of the phone book.  She
joins the church, comes back to the Congo when the war was over, and
is a great member of the true Church of Christ.  Africans are so
blessed with the spirit of prophecy, dreams, and revelation.  I know
that that happened, as crazy as it sounds.  I wish you could hear it
from her own mouth and see the look in her eyes as she tells the
story.

Anyway, I love you all and I can't wait to be able to tell all these
stories in person.

Have a great week!

Elder Garland